420 



NA TURE 



[September 23, 1922 



emanating from the East. We can well understand, 

 therefore, how it is that there are those who believe 

 that the focus of civilisation is destined to undergo 

 another shift, and that the day of the predominance 

 of North-Western Europe is drawing to a close. 



The subject is not one which can be discussed here. 

 But if I may sum up briefly the points I have been 

 trying to make, I would say that the human geographer 

 should have before him a twofold purpose. First, he 

 should strive to show that the deductions which the 

 biologists have slowly and painfully laid down in the 

 course of the last sixty years apply, though with an 

 essential difference — which requires careful definition 



— to the life of man. Secondly, he should use his 

 precise knowledge of the surface of the earth to work 

 out detailed applications of those deductions. In 

 other words, human geography is the biology of man, 

 and, -on account of man's vast power of modifying his 

 environment, necessitates a fuller knowledge of that 

 environment than can be required of the biologist in 

 tin narrower sense. Investigations along these lines 

 would, I think, promote greatly the interests of 

 geography as a whole, both by making clear to the 

 general public its value and in justifying that intensive 

 study of the surface relief and the associated phenomena 

 which must always remain its basis. 



Educational and School Science. 1 

 By Sir Richard Gregory. 



THE Educational Science Section of the British 

 Association, which attains its majoritv this year, 

 was established to consolidate the claims staked out 

 by workers in different educational provinces, and 

 promote common interest in their development as a 

 whole. As Prof. H. E. Armstrong explained at the 

 opening meeting, it was proposed to devote attention 

 to education in all its branches with the object of 

 introducing scientific conceptions into every sphere of 

 educational activity ; that is, conceptions which imply 

 such exact and profitable treatment of a subject as 

 should come from full knowledge. Educational science 

 signifies, however, much more than methods of teaching 

 or the theory of the curriculum. It involves conditions 

 of physical, mental, and moral health, with their mani- 

 fold types and variations, and the determination of the 

 most appropriate, and therefore most effective, factors 

 of growth at every stage of development. In its 

 present stage educational science must be largely 

 empirical, but in this respect it does not differ from 

 meteorology, for example ; and the laws which govern 

 the perpetually varying contents and conditions of a 

 child's mind are not much less precisely known or 

 applied than those by which atmospheric changes are 

 determined. 



Education may, therefore, be defined as the deliberate 

 adjustment of a growing human being to its environ- 

 ment ; and the scope and character of the subjects of 

 instruction should be determined by this biological 

 principle. What is best for one race or epoch need not 

 be most appropriate for another, but always the aim 

 should be to give the pupil as many points of contact 

 with the world around him as may be profitably 

 developed during his school career. This does not 

 mean, of course, that his vision is to be confined to 

 contemporary necessities or his thoughts to provincial 

 or even national fields. The resources available for 

 his instruction and guidance comprise the wisdom and 

 experience of the past as well as the power of the 

 present, and in their extensive and varied character 

 they now provide teachers with educational oppor- 

 tunities richer and fuller than those of any other period 

 of the world's history. Literature and art form noble 

 domains of the heritage into which the child of to-day 

 is born, but they were mostly planted long ago, and 



1 From the presidential address delivered to Section L (Educational 

 Science) of the British Association at Hull on Sept. ;. 



NO. 2760, VOL. I 10] 



their shapes have not been altered much in modern 

 times. Science has, however, transformed the whole 

 landscape entrusted to it, and the realm of its pro- 

 ductivity is continually extending. It is a kingdom 

 pole m with possibilities for good or evil — an inheritance 

 which cannot be renounced — and to let any of our 

 children grow up unfamiliar with their entailed posses- 

 sion is to neglect an obvious duty. 



The essential mission of school science is thus to 

 prepare pupils for civilised citizenship by revealing to 

 them something of the beauty and the power of the 

 world in which they live, as well as introducing them 

 to the methods by which the boundaries of natural 

 knowledge have been extended and Nature herself is 

 being made subservient to her insurgent son. We live 

 in a different world to-day from that of medieval times, 

 when the triviuin of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, with 

 the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music and 

 astronomy, comprised the subjects of a complete 

 education in the sciences as well as in letters — different 

 indeed from what it was only a century ago. The 

 influence of science is now all-pervading, and is manifest 

 in all aspects of human activity, intellectual and 

 material. Acquaintance with scientific ideas and 

 methods and applications is forced upon every one by 

 existing circumstances of civilised life with its facilities 

 for rapid transport by air, land, or sea, ready com- 

 munication by telephone or telegraph, and other means 

 by which space and time have been brought under 

 control and man has assumed the mastership of his 

 physical and social destiny. Science permeates the 

 atmosphere in which we live, and those who cannot 

 breathe it are not in biological adjustment with their 

 environment — are not adapted to survive in the 

 modern struggle for existence. 



School instruction in science is not, therefore, in- 

 tended to prepare for vocations, but to equip pupils 

 for life as it is and as it soon may be. It is as essential 

 for intelligent general reading as it is for everyday 

 practical needs ; no education can be complete or 

 liberal without some knowledge of its aims, methods, 

 and results, and no pupil in primary or secondary 

 schools should be deprived of the stimulating lessons 

 it affords. In such schools, however, the science to be 

 taught should be science for all, and not for embryonic 

 engineers, chemists, or even biologists ; it should be 

 science as part of a general education — unspecialised, 



